30.11.10

29.11.10

Ever seen that Italian movie about the bicycle thief? The main character in that movie had this job--hanging posters the old fashioned way with a bucket of glue and a ladder. The bicycle is how he got from one place to the next until it got stolen one day. Then everything falls apart. The movie is a cinematic classic, a masterpiece even.

I couldn't help thinking about that movie when I saw this man. He didn't have a bike though. His car was waiting by the curb below him.

25.11.10

I once read an Ibsen play about a famous, well established architect who harbored a robust fear of the "rising generation". He would be replaced by them--he knew it--and he could barely name them without feeling a bit terrorized. "The Rising Generation", he'd gasp with white knuckles--or at least, that how I remember my reading of the play.

I love how this image splits down the shadowy middle. A new generation of buildings is rising in Beirut. I wonder if old buildings like the one on the right know the terror of Ibsen's architect.

24.11.10

Usually when I see old buildings like this one my imagination runs wild. I fantasize about buying the place, fixing it up (I'd start with that balcony!), modernizing it in all the right ways, relishing the details of my own piece of history. In my imagination, simply living in a place like this would put me in a state of unending joy. I see myself happily doing all the boring day-to-day stuff of life because I get to do it in a rare gem of a home.

It's one part fantasy and one part theory--fantasy being that life is never as beautiful as the creations of my imagination. It's fun to get lost in my own beautiful visions, but they're just that--visions. And then there's the theory, which is that if my surroundings were beautiful enough, clipping my daughter's toenails would be become beautiful also. Now if only I could turn this fantasy into reality and test that theory. . . .

About Me

Everybody's looking for something. Mary Ann is looking for the real Beirut, whatever that means. These are the photos she takes along the way.

You can browse around the archives here or check out her other blogs. There's one from a few years ago, back when she blogged about art. And then there's another from '09 when she lived in St. Louis (USA).